Search, like everything else in the world of technology, is constantly evolving. Google and Bing have become far more visual in their search abilities, categorizing results in buckets like news, shopping, images, and more. Searchers themselves have become more self-referential in their selected terms and keywords, and more and more, search is becoming a game of highly targeted words and phrases. It’s gone from being all things to all people to a much more exact science.
In many respects, however, the more search changes, the more SEO remains the same. Core tactics like stellar, relevant content and well-designed web pages, built for maximum conversion and communication, will never go out of style. By now, you are probably familiar with the tried and true must-haves in SEO; the timeless techniques that all strategies must embrace. But what are the emerging trends that search engines are rewarding? How can you get ahead of the curve? Read on for tips on how to stay on the cusp of SEO evolution!
A World of Automation
In the beginning, SEO was primarily a manual process, full of metatag updates and hand-written content. While these elements are still integral, a myriad of tools and services have cropped up to make our lives both easier, and at times, more complicated too.
Marketing automation is one such advancement. Platforms such as Marketo aid marketers and business owners in communicating messages across multiple platforms, including social media, in a more automated fashion. Stats and metrics abound, and access to a wider variety of touch points become instantly available. That’s the good news.
The more challenging news is marketing automation, while technically beneficial for SEO because it’s wide-reaching and quantifiable, can be poorly executed, and thereby damaging to your overall marketing efforts.
The key to implementing this approach with success across the board lies in careful planning. You must first know extensively who your target audience is, the exact actions you want your leads to take once they find you, and a strong awareness of the technologies that best meet your company’s needs. Jumping into marketing automation as a way to boost reach and SEO without a firm strategy and clear picture of intent can result in complexities that bog you down. Done right, however, automation can exponentially improve your lead generations and lead management.
Content Publication
Want to beat your competitors in the content marketing arena? Then don’t be selfish about where you publish your creations. Most companies instinctively place all content they create on their personal site and blog. While these certainly need fresh articles and knowledge shares, consider sharing your content across social media channels, and perhaps most powerfully, on other peoples’ sites.
By publishing your content on media outlets, other blogs, and related sites important to your industry, you are spreading your brand awareness and credibility across the web. Outreach should be at the heart of your content marketing strategy. Your SEO results will reflect this willingness to branch out.
Ultimately, always pay homage to your business goals when it comes to aligning your content. For a few, this will mean hosting an exclusive content repository on your site or blog. For most, this means publishing great content across the web. It’s certainly a more challenging strategy, but the rewards are far greater too.
Know Your Customers. Seriously.
This is the blind spot for most companies and their SEO strategies. They make sweeping assumptions about the wants and needs of their audience, many of which are almost always off target. The result: content and keywords that are simply not in alignment with the target demographic.
Before you go crazy and launch a PPC campaign or related SEO tactics, spend time getting to know your customers. There’s only one accurate way to do so: you have to talk to them. Develop customer surveys and ask in-depth questions. Study social media profiles and posts in your channels, and engage active members in dialogue to learn more. Document your research in depth, and develop customer personas that are as detailed as possible.
Once you have a very clear picture of who you are marketing to, your chances of nailing the right keywords and creating wow-worthy content go through the roof. Without this empirical data, you’re just throwing spaghetti at the virtual wall.
Merging SEO and PR
Yes, SEO and PR are different strategies, but their goals are the same: lead generation and brand awareness. Today’s top marketers take an integrated marketing approach, ensuring that the two disciplines are working together.
For example, if you’re taking the time to create great content, it’s a waste if you’re not using PR to help get it picked up by the media. Don’t just launch great content on your blog or website and hope the world will find it; work with your media contacts to spread the word, and leverage your SEO and content marketing efforts to get the most out of every word you write.
In a nutshell, the new wave of SEO is about integrative marketing. SEO is a holistic discipline that involves well designed websites, content marketing, PR, and customer outreach. The more each arm of your marketing strategy connects intelligently, the more each facet is empowered to produce better and better results.
What other cutting edge SEO techniques do you currently use? And in turn, what are your biggest SEO obstacles?
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